


each peach

by etben



Category: Bandom
Genre: Babyfic, F/M, M/M, Multi, Threesomes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-26
Updated: 2011-07-26
Packaged: 2017-10-21 19:01:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/228563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etben/pseuds/etben
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pete and Patrick.  Pete and Ashlee.  Pete and Patrick and Ashlee...and a baby.</p>
            </blockquote>





	each peach

**Author's Note:**

> FACT: this story was sparked when and I were talking about Pete/Patrick/Ashlee threesomes and how badly we wanted to read some. FACT: this story actually got going when IMed me one night and told me to tell her a story. FACT: this story would have been lost forever at least twice, except that had chatlogs and saved my sorry ass. 
> 
> FACT: all three of these wonderful ladies made this story happen, mostly by letting me write it at them a few hundred words at a time and then hounding me until I wrote more. &enablers
> 
> FACT: read it over once it was all finished and assured me that it actually made sense to somebody who hadn't been reading along as I wrote it. ♥
> 
> FACT: was kind enough to braindump a lot of Pete&Ashlee canon on me. All mistakes and fabrications are mine and not hers!
> 
> FACT: This was written for in a holiday fic exchange. UM. I hope this is what you were looking for? It kind of got away from me somewhere in the middle. /o\

It starts with Patrick punching Cash.

He doesn't mean to—well, no. He doesn't intend to, doesn't walk into AK Chicago and think, hey, Cash is here, I should go punch him. In fact, before that night, Patrick would even have said that he liked Cash.

(Plenty of people get turned off by the shitty tattoos and the general being-an-asshole thing, but Patrick realized a long time ago that if he wasn't going to be friends with assholes, he would have to find himself a whole new set of friends, and possibly lock Pete Wentz in a cage.)

But in the second when Cash's arm is resting on his shoulder and Cash's voice is low in his ear—in that second, there's nothing that Patrick would rather do than beat the everloving shit out of Cash Colligan.

"Jesus Christ, Stump," Pete says, grabbing his arm. "What the fuck were you—slow down, asshole, will you?"

Patrick stops dead. His breath clouds in front of him, little explosions of white that whirl and drift upwards, fading as they go. He counts them, _one two three four five six seven eight nine ten_ , and then turns to Pete.

"Sorry I punched him," he says, and Pete laughs.

"Fuck that," he says. "Do you know how many times a week that kid gets beaten up? He's got a jaw made of rubber, I swear." He leans back against the wall. "If anything, you should apologize for making me run out of there after you." He takes a deep breath, tipping his head back and staring at the sky.

("It's so fucked up," Pete had told him once, back when they were younger and dumber. "Like, stars are supposed to be romantic and shit, but they're just fire that's too far away to be useful." They'd been sprawled on the grass in Grant Park, early spring night that was really too cold to make it a good idea.

Patrick had said something, some question about stars not being anything special, and Pete had rolled his shoulders in a slow horizontal shrug.

"I don't know," he'd said, "I mean, they're still _something_ , you know?" A pause. "Not romantic, but they're something."

Lately, he stares up at the sky a lot; Patrick can't ever see a star, but Pete's sure looking at something.)

"Pete?" Patrick says, when they go a full minute without saying anything. "Yo, Wentz, you still with me?"

Pete shakes himself, blinking. "Let me tell you, Trick," he says, "this fatherhood gig is fucking exhausting." And amazing, he doesn't say, but it's there in the line of his shoulders, the steadiness of his hands and his eyes.

It's in his voice, too, and if Patrick could sing like that, they'd sell a million records a day.

Pete rubs his hands together, pushing off the wall. "You ready to head out? It's fucking freezing out here, and I told Ash I'd be back early." His teeth gleam. "You should come back—we'll serenade the girls again, it'll be great."

Patrick thinks about Cash's grin, and about the way he'd looked, afterward: like he'd just been hit by something he really should have seen coming.

_Which one of you is the father, really?_

Patrick knows the feeling. "Yeah, sure," he says. "I'll meet you there."

*

The thing is, as much as Pete jokes about it (and he jokes about it a lot; it averages out at about three times per relationship, for a pretty generous definition of "relationship"), Patrick's never had a threesome with Pete and his girlfriend-at-the time.

"Man, you're making it sound all—all tawdry," Pete says whenever the subject comes up. "It's just, you know. I trust your judgment, dude." He stares at Patrick accusingly. "You should be honored, motherfucker."

"I can be honored without whipping it out, Wentz," he says, but. Well. It's actually kind of sweet, in a typically Pete way.

The thing is, Patrick doesn't generally like Pete's girlfriends. He doesn't hate them—they're not engaged in feuds, no matter what the internet thinks—but he doesn't especially like them, either. They're not who he'd want to date. Which is fine: that's why Pete is dating them, and Patrick isn't.

The thing is, never once has Patrick looked at a girl Pete was dating and been even the slightest bit jealous.

The thing is, Ashlee is the exception, not the rule.

*

The first time Patrick meets Ashlee, Pete's girlfriend (as opposed to Ashlee, that girl Pete's stalking) comes about a month after she and Pete start dating. Patrick's met her in passing before—Pete invites her to a lot of shows, and sometimes she comes, and then there are all the award shows—but it's the first time they're actually in the same spot at the same time for long enough to have a conversation, or maybe just the first time Pete lets them be.

And it's—nice. Patrick likes her, and she doesn't smack him upside the head when he talks about mixing for a full ten minutes with no pauses. They don't suddenly discover that they're long lost soulmates or anything like that, but Ashlee is quietly, sharply funny, telling stories about a life that, Patrick realizes, is even further removed from reality than theirs can be.

During dessert, she leans into Pete's side easily, without trying to hide herself or stake some kind of a claim. She rolls her eyes when Pete's being a douche, but so does Patrick, and they grin at each other in a moment of recognition, a split second of _why am i dating this idiot again?_

Not that Patrick is dating Pete, of course, but. Well. At this point, it doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of difference.

After, Pete orders them all coffee, but Ashlee folds her napkin on the table and shakes her head.

"Early interview tomorrow, babe," she says, and Pete nods.

"Text me after?" She kisses him on the side of the head, quick and gentle, then bends down a little more to kiss him on the mouth. Patrick looks down at his napkin, folding the slightly stained side in and smoothing it over his lap. The restaurant's quiet in a very Hollywood way, the kind of place that's been specially engineered to prevent overhearing even though everybody and their cousin can stare at you; still, he's probably imagining the sounds their mouths make together.

"Love you," Ashlee says, straightening up. Pete grins up at her, open and helplessly happy, and she rests an elegant hand on his shoulder, then looks up and nods at Patrick. "See you soon?" Her smile is wide but friendly; fabricated, not fake.

He nods. "Anytime," he says, and means it. Ashlee's smile widens just a bit, and she leans over and brushes a carefully-perfumed kiss across his cheek before drifting out.

Patrick doesn't see anybody staring as she leaves, but he knows they are.

"So?"

Patrick rolls his eyes.

"So _what_ , Pete?" The waiter comes by with their coffee, and despite his reputation Pete's not completely devoid of social graces; he makes faces at Patrick and tries to balance the tiny spoon on his index finger, but he doesn't say anything while their coffee is poured.

"I like her, Pete," he says, because sometimes it's just easier if he answers before Pete asks. "I approve, okay? You have my—my blessing, whatever."

Pete rolls his eyes. "Because suddenly we're in a Jane Austen novel?"

"Well, what do you want me to say, then?" Pete shrugs, stirring his coffee and taking a slow slurping sip. Patrick sighs. "I like her, Pete," he says again. "I'm not just saying that because she seems to put up with you, okay?" He shrugs, tapping out the bass line for the takeover on the little plate under his coffee cup. "She seems—I don't know, really normal."

Pete nods. "She's—like, on the one hand she's totally been shaped by the bullshit culture of celebrity out here, but she has this thing where she just—she fucking _owns_ it, you know? She makes it part of her." He runs his finger around the rim of his coffee cup like he's trying to make it sing. "I'm glad you like her, though."

Patrick shrugs. "I just hope she likes me, you know?"

"Well," Pete says, " _duh_ ," like it's just that easy.

*

And that is that. Now that Patrick has given his approval, he sees more and more of Ashlee—first dinners out, followed by dinners at the kitchen counter at Pete's house, where she munches pizza with the rest of them and kicks Pete's ankle when he argues about the mix some more.

"Not during dinner, asshole," she says. "Not unless you're going to play it so that I can listen and have an actual opinion, instead of just being bored." She rolls her eyes. "Or you could pay me to sit and look like I care," she says, "but frankly, babe, I don't think you can afford it."

"Maybe my rich girlfriend will loan me the cash," Pete says, and then, "ow, fuck you!" when Patrick kicks him in the ankle.

After a while, Ashlee starts turning up backstage before shows more regularly, dressed in jeans and sneakers, hoodie pulled close around her face.

"I'm incognito!" she says, jumping over the arm of the couch to land with her head in Pete's lap.

"You're a superspy," he agrees, pulling her hood back and running his hand through her hair. She's not, really; her security—a thousand times more serious than anything the band has ever had to use—is subtle in a way that just makes it clear how utterly they could take somebody out without even blinking. Still, if Patrick ignores the two beefy guys outside the door and the two more at either end of the hall, it's almost like she's just Ashlee, just a normal girl.

"Oh my god, I _know_ ," she says. "Like, when I was playing in Vegas—" Like a normal girl, except for how she's really not, which is probably for the best. Pete probably wouldn't know what to _do_ with a normal girl.

Ashlee doesn't really come out on the road with them as such. Their schedules conflict too much, with her always doing the late-night shows in LA while they're playing the Eastern seaboard, and them always stuck in the Midwest when she flies out to Florida. Still, when she has a few days free, she'll sometimes join the tour, riding along with them for a few days before they drop her off at another airport to fly home.

And what the hell is their life, Patrick sometimes wonders, that this seems like a completely reasonable plan?

The first time, it's a surprise thing, and Pete and Ashlee pretty much don't leave the back bedroom for the entire three and a half days she's there. The second time, Joe doesn't even realize she's there, and walks around the bus with his hands over his eyes for the next week.

"The bruises are worth it, dude," he says. "Seriously." After that, they institute a warning policy: Pete has to give the rest of them at least a day's warning before Ashlee shows up, so that at the very least they can get whatever crap they've stashed in the big bedroom before it becomes a no-fly zone.

The third time, Pete gives them three days, and Patrick winds up staring at Andy.

"Should we, like, clean?" he says, drinking his coffee and leaning back in his seat. "Or something?"

Andy shrugs. "I figure she's dating Pete, so probably not," he says. "Plus, remember what she did with that bell pepper?"

Patrick makes a face. It was pretty memorably vile, because apparently ballerinas are not nearly as polite or cultured as he would have thought. In the end, he gets distracted by the new stuff that The Cab are sending him, which means that the bus is even more of a pit than usual.

So of course he's alone on the bus when Ashlee gets there.

"Oh, hi," he says, after the third time she says his name. "Hey, great to see you!" He gets up to give her a hug, trips over an empty box of crackers, and winds up nearly tackling her to the couch when he over balances. For a long moment, they stare at each other, and then crack up laughing.

"So, hi," he says, sliding off the couch and settling on the floor. "Good to see you; sorry the place is a shithole; I think the guys are out on the waterfront?" They're somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, Maryland or one of the Carolinas, and Joe had expressed a deep-seated desire to throw stuff at the waves.

"Dude, you should see my bus," she says. "What are you working on?"

The next night, Patrick has sex with her.

They've got a show outside of DC the next night, but that night there's nothing more pressing than taking showers and watching a lot of crap on cable.

Andy has some friends he wants to visit, so Patrick is in with Joe, leaving Pete and Ashlee the other room. Joe snags first shower, and Patrick drags out his laptop and settles in on the right-hand bed. He checks his email from the bus or from venues, but it's nice to be able to read things on a screen bigger than the palm of his hand.

Predictably, there's an email from Pete; Patrick's phone rings just as he clicks on it.

"Fuck you," he says, instead of hello. "Not everybody is surgically attached to the internet."

Instead of Pete's horsey laugh, though, he gets a low, hoarse chuckle.

"Oh, shit," he says, "Sorry, Ash."

"Don't worry about it, babe," she says. "I know how he gets, trust me." She laughs again. "Once he texted me—then emailed to see if I'd gotten his text—then called to see if I'd gotten the email—and then called my fucking _security_ to see why the call hadn't gotten through." An indistinct yell comes over the phone; the call of the wild Pete Wentz. "I was in a fucking photoshoot, babe," she says, "Dianne was dicking with you; she likes you, I swear." Her voice gets a little louder, a little clearer. "She really does love him," Ashlee says. "I think she thinks he's a good influence or something."

"My mom thinks the same thing," Patrick says, which is true: Patrick's mom is, against all evidence, convinced that Pete is a Nice Young Man.

"Awesome," Ashlee says. "So, hey, I was calling you to ask if you and Joe wanted to come with us tonight." Patrick glances down at the computer, which says _goin out to cruise the dc scene with my luvly lady; want to come with? tell trohman to wear his dancin shoes._ More or less the same thing, really.

"I'm in, yeah," Patrick says. "Joe's still in the shower, hang on." He settles the laptop on the bed next to him, then stands up and crosses the room to hammer on the bathroom door, phone pressed against his shoulder. "Trohman, you want to come out with us tonight?" The water shuts off, and Patrick hears the tell-tale rustling noises of Joe wrapping a towel around his hair and scrubbing.

"Enh," Joe says, opening the door. "Think I'm gonna go chill with the guys in Cute, but I might join you later?"

"Put some fucking pants on," Patrick says. When he lifts the phone back to his ear, Ashlee is giggling. "Joe might come out later," he says.

"Yeah, well, make sure he knows about DC public decency laws," she says. "I hear they're pretty strict about that shit."

Over the phone, he hears Pete say something about politicians. "Pete says—"

"I've heard it," Patrick tells her. "Tell him that he has no room to talk."

"Tell him to go fuck himself," he hears Pete say, and then, "Ow!"

"Tonight you can tell each other whatever you want," Ashlee says. "Hanging up now."

*

They go to a bar that Pete knows about.

"Karaoke Thursday - everybody welcome," Patrick reads. Ashlee raises an immaculate eyebrow; beside her, Pete grins wide and guilty. "Fuck you," Patrick says. "You're not getting me up there."

"Uh huh," Pete says. "Sure thing."

"Fuck _you_ ," Patrick says again, but in they go.

Sure enough, Patrick winds up onstage, steadying himself on the mic stand and singing along to an over-synthesized version of Joe Cocker. Pete and Ashlee are in a corner booth, leaning into each other and laughing; he can see their teeth from the stage.

"You can leeeeeeave your hat on," he sings, "Thank you, good night, I'm just gonna—" The stage is tiny, and the edge comes sooner than Patrick expects.

"Careful there, buddy," Ashlee says as he stumbles into the booth. "Watch your step."

"Don't want you to break your pretty face," Pete says. Patrick rolls his eyes.

"I could break _your_ pretty face," he offers, but Pete just giggles.

"Omigod," he says, breathy and high-pitched. "Did you hear that, Ash? He thinks I'm pretty!"

Ashlee laughs and puts her arm around Patrick's shoulders, letting him lean against her. "Of course he does, dear," she says, and he hears the soft sound of a kiss, somewhere up and to the right.

"We should probably go," Pete says. "They're about to wind down."

(Used to be, Pete would stay all night at a club, long after everybody but the bartenders had left, and sometimes even after that. Ashlee's security gets twitchy when they try that, though, so mostly Pete ducks out early, these days.

"Plus," he'd said, "I have better things to do with my time now."

Patrick had rolled his eyes. "Thank you, Pete," he'd said. "I'm sure Ashlee likes being a thing you do."

"Not always," Pete had said, smirking. "Sometimes I let her do me."

There had been nothing to say to that, so Patrick had just shoved Pete into a snowbank and called it a day.)

Ashlee grabs her purse and they head outside the club, hurrying past the crowds of artfully-posed smokers leaning against the wall. Patrick sees the cab first and waves it over, but Pete grabs the door and pushes him in first.

"You get the middle seat," he hears, "you're tiny." He's still trying to sort himself out—possibly he's had more to drink than he realized—when Ashlee comes tumbling into the cab, scooting across the seat with a squeak and fetching up against Patrick's side. Beyond her, Pete is launching himself into the cab and slamming the door behind him, rattling off the name of the hotel for the driver.

"Hi," Ashlee says, leaning back against Patrick. Her face is pale, illuminated in flashes by the streetlights. "You sounded great." Patrick rolls his eyes and she flicks his nose, grinning upside-down at him. "No, really," she says. "Really."

"Thanks," Patrick says, and leans back against the window, cool and slightly greasy against the side of his face. Ashlee says something to Pete, and Pete laughs softly, and Patrick watches the buildings pass.

It isn't until Ashlee giggles and squirms against him that Patrick realizes that he's singing again, the same song over: _you give me reason to live._

"Sorry," he says, but Ashlee shakes her head.

"It just startled me," she says, leaning back against him again. "I could feel it, and it startled me."

"Yeah, Trick does that," Pete says. He's leaning against the other window, one leg up on the seat, staring at the two of them, all bright teeth and dark eyes. "I always liked it, though."

"Oh, I wasn't complaining," Ashlee says. When Patrick doesn't do or say anything, she elbows him gently in the side. "Keep going," she says. "It was nice."

" _Yeah, I know what love is_ ", Patrick sings, because it's the only thing to do. His eyes slip closed, but he keeps going.

"It's kind of hot, really," Ashlee says after a while, and Pete laughs.

"I've been telling him that for years, Ash," he says. "It doesn't seem to stick." Patrick doesn't open his eyes, doesn't do anything but keep singing, head against the window, Ashlee warm and snug against his side.

The cab spits them out at the hotel and they head inside; out of the corner of his eye, Patrick sees Ashlee's security pull up in dark SUVs.

Pete fumbles the keycard and shoves the door open; Patrick leans against the opposite wall and ducks his head.

"Well, see you—" he starts, but Pete grabs his wrist.

"Come on, Trick," he says. "Don't be a wet duck." He tugs on Patrick's arm, pulling him slightly away from the wall and then letting him drop back.

"Whatever, I'm going in," Ashlee says. "You guys can sort yourselves out." She presses a kiss against Pete's hair and sweeps into the room, and Patrick laughs and lets Pete tug him along behind her.

"A wet duck, Pete?"

Pete shrugs. "Whatever, you knew what I meant." And Patrick did, so there's that. "More importantly," Pete says, shrugging out of his hoodie and tossing it on the bed, "more importantly, Patrick, you like my girlfriend." He turns around, leaning against the edge of the bed, arms crossed across his chest.

"Well," Patrick says, "well, yeah," because he does like Ashlee, thinks she's good for Pete and Pete is maybe even good for her (which is altogether rarer, on the whole). Patrick flips the deadbolt and leans back against the door. "She's cool." From the bathroom, he hears the sound of the tap flipping on, the quiet noises of Ashlee just out of sight.

"No, I mean, you—" Pete takes a deep breath, tilts his head back, lets it out through his nose. "You _like_ her." He takes a step forward, another, another.

And—and the thing is, he's not wrong. Ashlee is beautiful and elegant, but Patrick gets the impression that she's a lot more normal than her image would suggest. She's got an edge to her smile and a tendency not to wear bras, but she giggles at Pete's stupid puns and kicks off her shoes when she's on the bus.

Plus, she's hot, but, whatever, Patrick is very definitely not thinking about that. Not at all. Or, well—now he is, because Pete's being a douche and bringing it up, but as soon as he gets out of here he is going to go right back to his very busy schedule of not ever thinking about Pete's girlfriend naked.

"I—I should go," Patrick says, shaking his head, but Pete is suddenly there, up close, hands braced on the door on either side of Patrick's head.

"No," he says. "No, tell me." Patrick shakes his head again, trying to express what he'd really rather not have to say; his hair brushes against Pete's bare arm and they both freeze.

Patrick's known Pete for years now, has slept in his bed and on his couch and in the same corner of the van, but it feels like they've never been this close before.

"Tell me," Pete says again, and Patrick takes a breath, one last breath before—

"Tell you what?" The water's still running, but the bathroom door is open and Ashlee's standing there, leaning against the doorframe. The skin at her wrists glistens damply, and the top button of her jeans is undone.

Pete breathes in again, glances over his shoulder and grins sharp and dangerous.

"Our boy here was just telling me how fine you are," he says, bringing his hips forward to grind against Patrick, but somehow all of the energy, all the spark is gone. This, Patrick can deal with: this is just Pete, just Patrick's best friend being a jackass because that's what he does when he doesn't know how else to get a reaction. Sure, that's Pete's dick, and sure, he's slightly better than half-hard, but Pete can and has gotten erections from desk chairs and teddy bears.

"Actually," Patrick says, "your boyfriend's just being an asshole again." He rests his hand on the back of Pete's neck, reassurance and absolution, and feels Pete relax against him, letting their bodies lean together.

"Well, fortunately for him, I tend to go for assholes," Ashlee says, and that must be some kind of codeword for them, because Pete is suddenly tense in Patrick's arms, pressing a quick kiss against Patrick's neck and then looking back at Ashlee.

"You think so?" he says, which makes no sense to Patrick _at all_ , and Ashlee shrugs.

"Depends what you're suggesting, babe," she says, and that is officially it, Patrick can feel Pete's dick against his thigh and he is so totally out of here. Their friendship has limits, after all—not many of them, but a crucial few—and deliberate boners are one of them.

"Um," he says again. "I should probably go."

"No," Pete says, leaning heavily against Patrick, holding him against the door. "No, don't."

"Is he telling the truth, Patrick?" Ashlee comes quickly across the room and leans against Pete's back, adding her weight to his, the two of them pressing him into the door until it feels like he can't breathe. She hooks her chin over Pete's shoulder and smiles at him, slow and luxurious.

Patrick has been Pete's friend for years; he knows a dare when he sees one.

He takes a deep breath. "Yeah," he says, shifting his shoulders against the door. "I think you're pretty hot. Good job on that."

*

Patrick wakes up the next morning with his hand tucked under his face, staring at Pete's alarm clock. He knows it's Pete's alarm clock because of the jagged dent in the side, a battle scar from the time Pete spent the night before they left on tour out with Travis and Bill Beckett, and Patrick had to come get him before Andy got fed up and left without them. Pete could afford a new alarm or three, but he hasn't replaced the old one.

As he watches, the minutes click from :59 to :00. The clock makes a dull click, and the ALARM SET light in the lower right-hand corner flickers.

"—at two minutes after the hour, this is NPR, national public radio," it tells him. "Weather today for Chicago is—"

"—nngh." The arm across his back shifts slightly. "Gragh."

Patrick turns his head slowly, scrubbing his face against the pillow. Ashlee smiles at him lazily, drums her fingers against his back, and lets her eyes fall shut again; Pete presses his face against her neck, his hair falling across his face.

"In Washington this morning," the clock continues, and Patrick reaches back and slaps at it until it shuts off.

"Turn off the alarm," Pete says, muffled against Ashlee's skin. "Otherwise it's just going to start again in seven minutes." The sheets are twisted around their waists, a tangle of dark blue against pale skin, and they shift slightly in rhythm with the motion of Pete's arm, with the slow sigh of Ashlee's breathing. She shifts her hips and digs her nails into Patrick's back.

Patrick fumbles blindly with the switch—left side, at the back, ALARM ON, ALARM SET, ALARM OFF—and slides it down to the bottom notch without looking.

"Thanks," Ashlee says. "Now get over here and— _oh_." Pete's pulling her leg back, over his hips, and she turns onto her back and arches into it. The sheets aren't slipping down, but it's impossible not to know exactly what's going on, impossible to miss the exact moment that Pete slides into her, the little gasp and the shiver that goes through her.

(The memory, after all, is vivid: Ashlee above him, hands on her own breasts, sinking carefully down over him; Pete's hand on her thigh, smoothing over the tense muscle; Ashlee's high little moan and the way her hips rocked forward as their hipbones brushed; Pete's teeth on his neck, his warm heavy breath, his voice.)

Pete's hands are the same color as Ashlee's nipples, almost, although her skin is much smoother; Patrick remembers the taste and feel of both. She jerks when Pete tugs on them, interrupting her own rhythm, and Pete smirks against her neck.

"Fuck you," she says, and it's not clear who she's talking to: her right hand is digging into Pete's thigh, leaving pale skins and tiny indentations; her left hand is pulling the sheet down. Patrick takes a deep breath and follows it, tracing its revelations: the angles of Ashlee's hips, shadowed by blankets and the curve of Pete's side; the delicate skin of her thighs; the awkward ankle of Pete's knees. The slow slide of Pete's dick as he rocks into Ashlee, lifting her up a little with every thrust.

The base of Pete's dick, when Patrick can see it, is glistening in the little bit of light that comes through the crappy hotel blinds. Patrick braces his hands on Ashlee's thighs and licks, tasting salt and sweat and Ashlee and Pete, all the flavors and smells of last night but concentrated by sleep. Pete's hips jerk, predictably enough, and Ashlee's hand slides through his hair.

He knows it's Ashlee, because she doesn't pull.

She does dig her fingernails into his scalp, but that's only later, when Patrick's licking across her clit again and again and Pete is fucking her with fast shallow strokes.

"God, fuck," Ashlee says, and something that sounds vaguely like Pete's name. Her heels dig into Patrick's back, holding him still, and he keeps his head down and scrapes his teeth over her, swallowing while she moans.

"Come on," Pete says, "Come on, fuck, yeah, just—" Ashlee bucks up, then grinds back down, letting out her breath in one long sigh; Pete thrusts up two more times, three, and then clutches her hips and groans.

Patrick rests his forehead against Ashlee's thigh and rolls to one side, reaching down until he can touch his dick, eyes closed, breathing deeply.

Afterwards, he wipes his mouth and his hand on the sheets. Pete makes a face at him, but Patrick just rolls his eyes.

"Oh, shut up," Ashlee says, leaning back against Pete's chest; he's scooted them back so that they're propped against the headboard, Ashlee between his thighs, lazy and sated. "Like you're not way grosser."

"Whatever, like _you're_ not," Pete says, leaning down to kiss her. Patrick's boxers are next to the overstuffed chair on the other side of the room; he rolls off the bed and grabs them, trying to decide whether it's worth it to put them back on for the trek back to his room. His jeans are—

"—hey, dude," Pete says, careful and casual. "Trick, hey." Patrick picks up his jeans from under the coffee table and pats the pockets, checking for his key, his ID, his change from the bar last night. One of his socks is tucked between his shoes, but he can't find the other one.

"Check inside your jeans," Ashlee suggests; Patrick shakes his jeans, and sure enough, the missing sock falls out, crumpled into a ball. He kicks it onto his shoes and tugs his jeans on; might as well go commando when all he has to do is walk down a hallway.

"Patrick," Pete says again, and Patrick looks up, blinking.

"Yeah?" Pete's running his fingers through Ashlee's hair, one arm around her waist. The room is still mostly dark.

"Tell Trohman he missed out," Pete says finally. His teeth pick up the light that creeps in around the heavy hotel blinds.

"Sure thing," Patrick says, and lets himself out.

*

So that happens, and it's—whatever it is. Joe gives Patrick shit for coming back with his underwear in his hand, but he accepts it as the natural result of a night out on the town with Pete. Ashlee smiles at Patrick on the bus the next day, easy and normal, and then kicks his sorry ass at Wii tennis; she kisses his cheek in Cincinnati when she's leaving for her flight.

Pete gives him a wet willie and a half-hour backrub, and Patrick figures that things are back to normal.

A month and a half later, Patrick is sitting on the couch, reading AP (which is normal). Pete comes out from the back room, where he's been taking a mid-morning nap (also normal, for given values of Pete Wentz), talking on the phone with Ashlee (very normal, these days).

"Patrick," he says, "come here, man, I've got something to show you." This is also normal: Pete and Ashlee's phone conversations tend to include at least as much time where they're talking to somebody else as time when they're talking to each other.

Patrick follows Pete back to the back bedroom, where Pete pushes him down onto the bed, sets the phone on the pillow beside him, and begins to grope him through his jeans.

This is—not normal.

Not that Patrick is complaining, not when "not normal" means Pete's hand on his inseam, Pete's breath warm and damp against his thigh, Pete's hair under his fingers. Pete's fingers tucked into his jeans, first a little and then a lot, popping the button and sliding the zipper down.

"Hi," Ashlee says in his ear. "What's up?"

This is really, really weird.

"Um," Patrick says, mouth dry. "Ashlee?" Pete bites his hip and grins up at him.

"Yeah," Ashlee says. "How're you doing, babe?" Her voice is soft and warm and Patrick kind of suspects that she's laughing at him, but he can't find the energy to care much about it when Pete's got his boxers around his knees and is rubbing his face against Patrick's dick.

"Not bad," Patrick says. Pete hasn't shaved in a few days, and it's almost too much, but almost switches over to just-right when Pete presses his lips against the head of Patrick's dick and slides slowly down. "I think your boyfriend's growing a beard, though," he says.

Ashlee tsks. "Really?" Patrick hmms, and then so does Pete, the sound and vibration making Patrick shiver. "How bad is it?" Ashlee asks. "Like, is it really ugly?" She sighs. "Because, like, I'd probably still love him if he had a really ugly beard, but it wouldn't be easy."

Pete's mouth is warm and wet, and it's not like this is the first time Patrick's been the recipient of Pete's sporadic affection for fellatio, or even the second, but somehow it's different here and now, with Pete's hands warm on his hips and Pete's girlfriend smirking down the phone at him.

"It's pretty bad," Patrick tells her. "You should maybe think about withholding sex."

"Really?" Ashlee asks, like they're actually talking about Pete's awful facial hair.

"Ngha," Patrick assures her. He would go on, but apparently Pete takes insults to his patchy sketchy beard as an invitation to suck Patrick's brain out through his dick. "I—" he tries again, but winds up coming down Pete's throat instead.

"Patrick?" Pete stands up, grinning close-mouthed at Patrick, and walks to the bus bathroom. "You're breaking up, what did you say?"

"It's maybe not actually that bad," Patrick says, low and quick, "but don't tell him I said that, because then he'll keep going and it'll get worse."

It is _totally_ that bad, actually, but somehow that doesn't matter.

*

Things go on, time passes. They finish the tour; they go back to their apartments for a few weeks and ignore the rest of the world entirely; they get tired of that and go back to harassing each other on a daily basis. Pete and Ashlee continue to be disgustingly cute; Patrick continues to occasionally have sex with them.

It's really not so bad, on the whole. Patrick is starting to get a handle on how this thing works: basically, he's being used as a human sex toy by his best friend and his best friend's hot girlfriend. Which is maybe creepy, and definitely more than a little weird, but, really, whatever. Patrick has lived a lot of weird things, and seen a lot of even weirder things. On the whole, he's pretty sure that there are worse things in the world than occasionally having really great sex with people he likes.

He winds up in their hotel room a few more times, before the tour ends, and sometimes Ashlee calls him up and talks to him while Pete blows him. (Sometimes she calls to talk about other things, too: mix choices for the album; Pete's terrible hair; whether or not Mrs. Wentz is going to hate her.

"Dude, shut up, you'll be fine," Patrick tells her. "She's Pete's mom; she's not going to care if you wear too much eyeliner."

"Fuck you," Ashlee says, but he can tell she's smiling.)

One afternoon, Pete corners him in the back lounge, locking the door behind himself and leaning against it. He's got his seductive face on, which isn't anywhere near as hot as the faces he makes when he forgets to make a face, but Patrick's willing to go with it if it means he'll get laid.

"Patrick?" Pete says hopefully, and Patrick saves his work and closes his computer.

"Yeah, sure," he says, holding out his hand for the phone. When he gets Pete's hand instead, it throws him, and he stands there staring at it.

"She's on a plane," Pete says, which, right, that makes sense.

"What," Patrick says, "and you couldn't wait three hours?" He pulls Pete in until he's close enough to kiss, warm and soft and friendly. "Asshole."

 

"Fuck you," Pete says, "if you're not interested, I'll just go talk to Joe." He squirms a bit, half-serious; he's also half-hard, pressing against the front of his jeans. Patrick runs his fingers over the bulge, firm and quick, and Pete shivers.

"I didn't say that," Patrick says, tightening his hand around Pete's wrist and stroking him through his pants again. "I mean, you know, whatever; you're already here, so I might as well go with it."

"That's good, Trick," Pete says. "Taking whatever you can get; I respect that." Pete's basically straddling his thighs, thrusting lazily into his hand. When Patrick looks up from his dick, Pete's grinning at him, that same cocky jerk grin that gets him punched and kissed in pretty much equal measure. It's easy to lean up and press his face against Pete's neck, and even easier to bite down, tasting sweat and hair product and Pete.

Pete arches forward and makes a choked noise. Patrick pauses, licking the side of Pete's neck idly, and then bites again.

"Is that what we're doing?" He says it against Pete's skin, his lips moving slickly, and Pete shivers.

"Careful, fucker," he says. "Don't fucking give me a hickie." He's breathing heavily, though, and he doesn't resist when Patrick shoves him to his feet and steers them towards the bed.

"Whatever," he says, pushing Pete down on his back. "You know you love it." He pulls Pete's shirt up over his shoulders, leaving it tangled around his hands. When Pete squirms, Patrick bites down on the inside of his arm, hard and messy with spit and sweat. Pete thrusts up, almost knocking Patrick off-balance, but Patrick just rides it out and leaves his mouth where it is, toying with the skin and sucking. When he pulls back, there's a mottled red mark that Pete twists his head around to see.

"You like it," Patrick says again, and Pete shakes his head, not really negation or agreement, just movement, uncontrolled and unconscious. "You know," Patrick adds, between tiny bites to Pete's collarbone, "Ashlee's going to see these." Pete arches up again, pressing himself against Patrick's mouth, his hands, and Patrick does his part and holds him back down, biting harder.

"She's going to ask you," he says, setting his teeth against Pete's shoulder, "what the hell you were doing," his ribs, bumping bones and Pete's hoarse sighs, "to get so," his stomach, biting gently until Pete giggles and then harder until he moans, "messed up like this."

Patrick pulls Pete's already-low jeans down a little further and bites a bruise against his hipbone; Pete stiffens under him, groaning, and comes against Patrick's neck in a messy splash.

"Fuck," Pete says, "fuck, _Patrick_." He sounds drunk and dazed, and his hands are grabbing aimlessly at the blanket. Patrick would wait, let Pete jerk him off—Pete has nice hands, for some things—but Pete seems pretty out of it, and there's no real reason for Pete to be involved. Instead, Patrick bites him again, easy and friendly, and slides one hand down into his own pants, jerking himself tight and quick. "Fuck, are you— _fuck_ ," Pete says again, sounding a little amazed.

Patrick just lets it all wash over him: Pete's hands in his hair, the smell of Pete's sheets, Pete's voice washing over him. Pete's totally not involved, not at all.

"Fuck," Pete says, and Patrick totally agrees.

*

"Fuck you," Darren says. "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you in the _ear_."

Patrick just shakes his head. "I'm sorry, but having sex isn't going to change the fact that you're still _wrong._ "

In the corner, Chris and Greta and Bob are curled up on the couch, watching with wide eyes. When Patrick turns his back on them, he hears a giggle, but he ignores it. The important thing here is that Darren is _wrong_.

Once the argument draws to a standstill (Darren is maybe not completely wrong, but Patrick isn't giving it up just yet) there's the rest of the song to go through, and the sky is dark blue and gleaming with streetlight and stars by the time Patrick hugs them all and heads for the door.

"Hey, Stumph, wait up," he hears in the parking lot, and he turn around, keys hanging from his fingers.

"Greta, hey," he says, leaning back against his car. "Darren admitted the error of his ways?"

Greta grins. "Nope, but he found your phone," she says, holding it up. "You're lucky it was him and not one of the interns."

Patrick hesitates, reaching out to grab the phone. "And Darren found it for me out of the goodness of his heart?"

"Nah," she says, "he still thinks you're wrong and stupid." She shrugs. "He lost his last week, and one of the boys out front found it." Her giggle is more than a little evil. "He's had to empty his voicemail twice since Thursday; I think he's going to wind up changing his number."

"You've come a long way, baby," Patrick sings, laughing, and takes the phone from Greta's outstretched fingers. "Just make sure he gives me the new one, when he changes it; I want to be able to tell him how wrong he is some more."

"Fair enough," Greta says, leaning in and kissing him on the cheek. "See you tomorrow!"

ONE MISSED CALL, the phone tells him when he flips it open. It's from Pete, but instead of his usual "Patrick isn't answering his phone but I need to talk to him" text message, there's just the little icon showing that he has a voice mail. Patrick shrugs and dials his mailbox, turning on the car and pulling out of the parking lot while he punches in his password. The Hushies are climbing into Bob's mother's van, and he waves at them as he pulls past them.

"Hey," Pete's voice says in his ear, rough and whispery. "Hey, Trick, I've got something for you to hear—" For a second, Patrick can't understand what he's hearing, but then the mess of sound resolves itself into Pete's low groan and Ashlee's gasping, aching moans.

He listens all the way home, hand clenched around the phone and eyes carefully on the road, then pulls into his driveway and listens to the last few minutes. He rests his free hand on his thigh, digging his fingers in against the taut muscle. Ashlee gets louder, but Pete gets quieter, so that all Patrick can hear in the end is her voice, the half-whispered profanities and the way she whimpers in the back of her throat.

"Fuck," Pete says. "God, fuck, Patrick, why the fuck—" There's a long pause, the noisy silence of Pete catching his breath, and then the empty static of the call cutting off.

"To erase this message," the automated voice begins, and Patrick presses nine, snaps the phone closed, and leans back, shaking the cramp out of his hand.

He's not going to jerk off in his car. He has a bed inside—two beds, actually, not to mention a couch and an armchair and a fucking shower. He even has bar stools in his kitchen, if he wants, although the kitchen windows face the street and don't have curtains, so probably not. He's not going to jerk off in his car, even if it is dark enough that nobody could see what he was doing without being pressed up against his window (in which case he would notice and could punch them). He's not going to jerk off in his car, in his driveway, thinking about his best friend and his best friend's girlfriend having sex for him to listen to—although, really, it probably wasn't exclusively for his benefit, at least not judging by the sounds Ashlee was making—

—Patrick slides his hand down his dick again, and, yes, okay, he's _totally_ jerking off in his car in his driveway thinking about his best friend and his best friend's girlfriend having sex for him to listen to, but in his defense, he's not doing it very _much_. Even once he undoes his seat belt, there's not really enough room for him to move his hand or his hips, so he's basically just grabbing onto his dick and thinking about Pete's hands on Ashlee's hips, his mouth on Ashlee's neck, his dick inside her.

Fortunately, it's dark enough that Patrick wiping his hand off on the grass probably just looks like him picking up a bit of trash, if any of his nosy neighbors are even looking. He doesn't turn any lights on inside, just navigates by reflected streetlight as he drops his keys on the counter and makes his way to the bedroom.

He takes his phone with him, but it's too dark for anybody else to see.

*

Three months later, Pete wakes him up in Antarctica.

"Pete," Patrick says, (slowly and patiently, because dealing with Pete late at night is a lot like dealing with a very small child) "Pete, it's three in the fucking morning."

"It's two forty-seven," Pete says, chin digging in to Patrick's sternum.

"Fuck you," Patrick says, "that doesn't make it better." He rolls his eyes, even though he knows Pete can't see it.

"Fuck you, don't fucking roll your eyes at me," Pete says, poking Patrick in the shoulder. "Thirteen minutes is nothing to sneeze at." His hands are braced next to Patrick's head, and he's straddling Patrick's hips, holding him down into the bed. Patrick wonders sleepily if this is some kind of sex thing.

"Is this some kind of sex thing?" he asks, and Pete's restless twitching goes suddenly still. "Pete?"

"I mean, no," Pete says, "except that yes, but—" he takes a deep breath and lets it out, quick and shaking. "Ashlee's pregnant." He sounds nervous and confused and terrified. He sounds really fucking happy.

Patrick blinks, once and then again, and then sits up; Pete scrambles backwards, starting apologies and then cutting himself off, but Patrick catches him by the wrist and pulls him in tight, wrapping his arms around Pete's bony back.

"Shut up, you idiot," he says, hands in Pete's hair. "It's going to be fine, it's going to be great."

And it is, and it is. Pete is scattershot and even more vibrantly ridiculous than usual, talking a mile a minute and thinking even faster, but he's so stupidly happy it's hard to get too annoyed. He writes almost constantly, drinks too much Red Bull, and stares at a million pictures of tiny baby clothes, all with that same disbelieving grin.

They get back to the states and Ashlee comes out to visit, red haired and glowing, and practically flies into Pete's arms, giggling and whispering. They're all in New York, visiting old friends and doing press, and normally—for values of normal that allow for Patrick having sex with his hot almost-married friends—Patrick would join them, maybe to shoot the shit but probably for something more. Now, though, it feels awkward and inappropriate, so he takes his key and his double bed in a room with Andy and doesn't complain.

Around ten that night, Pete comes in, hair floppy and eyes gleaming.

"Hey, Hurley," he says, throwing himself across Andy's bed. "Can we borrow your video camera?"

"That depends," Andy says, not looking up from his computer. "Are you going to use it for good or for evil?"

Pete grins, sprawled out on his back. "Oh, evil, definitely," he says.

Andy raises his eyebrows, but still doesn't look at Pete. "By evil, do you mean porn?"

"No," Pete says. "Dude, she's pregnant, of course not." He pauses, staring at the ceiling. "Although I guess there's good money in that..." Andy kicks him in the shoulder, still focused on whatever he's reading. "Dude, of course not," Pete says. "We're just going to fuck with people on the internet."

"Go for it," Andy says. Pete rolls over and kisses Andy's ankle, then flings himself off of the bed and drops onto Andy's suitcase, where he rummages noisily until he digs out the battered camcorder Andy's had since their first or second tour.

"Thanks," he says again, holding it aloft. "Your generosity will not be forgotten!" Andy just flips him off, and Pete grins and turns to go.

His hand brushes against Patrick's shoulder when he climbs over Patrick's bed—of course it does. Fucking Pete, can't ever resist the urge to go in a straight line and make a nuisance of himself.

The video hits the internet two days later. Patrick has to admit that it's actually pretty funny; he also has to smack Pete upside the head for using good headphones. They're not _his_ good headphones, of course—he knows better than to let Pete near those—but it's the principle of the thing.

The next week, Patrick sends him a playlist of songs the baby should hear—old standards, mostly, quiet and soothing and full of love. It's possible that he's undermining his own position, here.

Ashlee scales her touring schedule back some, after the wedding—not a lot, and not right away, because, as she puts it, "I'm pregnant, Pete, not _dead_ "—but enough that she can come out and visit more often. As the months go by, Ashlee is pretty much grounded, and Pete stays close, hovering over her, bringing movies and treats and a million and one pregnancy books, trying to get Patrick to sing to the baby bump. (Ashlee shrugs her shoulders and laughs awkwardly, and Patrick punches Pete in the shoulder on her behalf) They're nesting, and it's really pretty damn adorable

Patrick tries to back off, ignoring Pete's texts and finding reasons to stay away when Pete gets fed up with 160 characters of harassment at a time.

"Seriously, Pete," he says, when Pete invites him over to play Mariokart for the second day running. "Don't you have better things to do?"

"Well, your mom's busy, so no, not really," Pete says, and Patrick rolls his eyes and hangs up on him.

Half an hour later, his phone rings again, same ringtone.

"Pete, _no_ ," Patrick says. "Seriously, go jerk off if you're that bored."

Ashlee's voice is low and throaty; she's been getting over a cold, mainlining orange juice and sleeping most of the day. "God, I wish that were the problem," she says. "He's just bored, I think, but—"

"—but a bored Pete is a danger to himself and others," Patrick finishes for her.

"Not to mention fucking obnoxious," Ashlee agrees. "Come over and entertain him, please?"

"That bad already?"

Ashlee sighs. "He's ordering baby furniture online, which wouldn't be so bad except he wants to put it together by himself," she says. "Call me crazy, but I don't want power tools in this house until the kid is old enough to use them himself."

"Good point," Patrick says. "I'll be over in half an hour."

"Make it twenty minutes and I'll blow you," Ashlee says, and laughs awkwardly. When she hangs up, Patrick stares at his phone, the display blinking 2:18 at him again and again. When it goes dark, he flips it shut and grabs his laptop.

He and Pete waste the afternoon sprawled on the living room floor, lazy in the warm sun. Patrick grabs the acoustic he keeps at Pete's place and fucks around, trying out snatches of melodies, slow and easy, but eventually he gives up on pretending and just plays their lullaby over and over.

The words are inked on Pete's arm, but Patrick doesn't need to look at them to remember.

"We should put that on the album," Pete says, staring at the ceiling. "A hidden track, maybe."

"You think?" Patrick says, fingers flat and still across the strings.

On the couch, Ashlee turns her head. "You should, yeah," she says. "It's a good song."

"Hey, babe," Pete says, sitting up and smiling. "I didn't think you were awake." He leans in to kiss her, quick and uncomplicated, and Patrick looks down at his fingers, watching his chords.

"Only a little," Ashlee says. "I like that one, though."

"Well, there you have it," Pete says, and there's another soft wet noise. "Hey, how's baby doing?"

"Oh, you know," Ashlee says, but she lets Pete lean in to listen anyways. Pete is endlessly fascinated with her stomach, even though she's not really showing yet, and spends lots of time with his head in her lap, ear pressed against her "just in case".

"You know you're not going to be able to actually feel anything for a few months, right?" Patrick asks one afternoon. The internet says not until 21 weeks, in fact, but sometimes it's not good to give Pete all of the available information. Besides, it's not like he can't google it for himself—he probably already has.

"Shut up, Stump," Pete says, kicking his feet off the edge of the couch. "You're ruining my special moment."

"Where by 'special moment', you mean 'staring at my tits', right?" Ashlee says. "No, don't get up," she adds when Pete goes wide-eyed and mock-shocked. "Whatever, you know I don't mind." She looks up at Patrick and grins, rueful and accepting. "I figure, hey, they're here, somebody might as well enjoy looking at them."

She shrugs, and Patrick has a lot of sympathy for Pete. Ashlee's breasts have always been really nice, in clothes and out, but somehow now they're even _nicer_.

Not that he's been seeing them up close and personal much, not since the pregnancy. Which is completely reasonable, and, honestly, even as hot as Ashlee is right now, even as hot as Pete pretty much always is—even with that, Patrick can't really see himself having hot threesome sex. Not right now, and maybe not ever again. They're having a _baby_ ; they're going to be _parents_. They have bigger things on their minds, serious things—things that most definitely don't involve threesomes. It'd be weird, and not in the "awkward yet surprisingly hot" way that things used to be. It was nice, and now it's done, and that's okay.

Plus, Patrick's never had a pregnancy kink, and as time goes by, Ashlee starts looking really _very pregnant_. Call him a prude, but Patrick would feel more than a little weird sticking his dick up next to a tiny _person_.

"Dude, gross," Pete says, when the subject inevitably comes up. "You have a sick mind, Stump." He rolls his eyes. "It's not, like, next to the baby or anything," he adds. "There's a mucous plug and stuff, it's really pretty awesome."

"I hate you," Patrick says, reaching for his computer. "I'm going to google that now, and I know it's going to be gross but I'm going to have to look anyways." He looks; it's gross. "Second of all," he adds, "I know you're not actually, like, jizzing on your kid." He shrugs. "That doesn't make it not weird."

"For you, maybe," Pete says, and he has a point. If age and relationship status and sexuality and basic self-preservation haven't stopped him yet, there's no reason to think that a weird mental image would do the trick. And clearly it doesn't, because Pete and Ashlee are having a lot of sex. Patrick isn't even trying to notice, isn't pining for them or fantasizing about it or being creepy like that. Pete just has a lot of hickies, all of a sudden, in all the same places Patrick used to like to bite, and once or twice he comes down to breakfast with what looks a lot like ropeburn on his wrists.

Plus, he and Ashlee have a habit of sneaking off to the bedroom to "nap" while Patrick is over, and they're really just not as quiet as they think they are. Patrick maybe sometimes takes some "naps" of his own, but only when they're not around to notice, and, well. Well. It's not his fault that they're hot, awesome, and pretty much perpetually horny.

It's not weird, though. In fact, it's surprisingly un-weird, given that Patrick's spending most of his free time these days with his best friend and his best friend's extremely pregnant wife, and given that they used to sometimes all have sex together.

*

Things are slow and lazy, Ashlee getting rounder and rounder, more and more inclined to waste the day sitting on the couch with her head in Patrick's lap, pretending to watch daytime television.

"Sometimes I worry about exposing her to _Make Me A Supermodel_ in the womb," Ashlee says, eyes closed, "but I figure she might as well get used to it early, you know?"

Patrick combs his fingers through her hair and nudges the volume down a little more, until it's so low they can barely hear it, tiny crazy people miming tiny crazy lives.

They paint the second bedroom for the baby—Pete comes up with increasingly ridiculous names, but Ashlee keeps insisting that they wait until they meet her, so for now she's just _the baby_ —and have to do it four times before they hit the right color of pale yellow. Ashlee is practically spherical, pausing for breath every few minutes, but she attacks the walls with a paintbrush and a determined grin, singing along to Patrick's oldies playlist and smacking Pete upside the head when he tugs on the long red braid hanging down her back.

(She forgets to put the paintbrush down first, of course, so Pete gets a faceful of Goldenrod Daydream. Patrick winds up sending them both off to shower with one wall still unpainted. He's most of the way done before they get back, damp and flushed; in that time, the water goes on, turns off, and then goes on again.)

Patrick sings lullabies, late at night over crackling cell phone lines, and he's not sure which of the three he's supposed to be soothing.

They make a video, they fight with the label, they go back on tour, and somehow Patrick goes from singing over the phone to the baby bump from the back room of a tiny club one day to staring at crappy cell phone pictures of Pete and Ashlee and a reddish blob with tufts of dark hair.

 _welcome pear elizabeth_ , the text message says. _best thing that ever happened to me_.

 _congratulations,_ Patrick types back, _but how does Ashlee feel about being 2nd best?_ He sets the phone aside, but a few seconds later it buzzes again. The display says Ashlee-personal, the line that most people don't have.

 _I'm pretty ok with it,_ the message reads. _maybe i can get some sleep now._ And isn't it just like Pete and Ashlee to both be texting as soon as humanly possible after the birth of the firstborn.

 _put the phones down and give your daughter a hug_ , he sends to both of them, and sets his phone aside, smiling.

It doesn't buzz again for the rest of the night.

When Patrick meets her, a few days later, Pear—"Seriously, Pete, _Pear?_ " "Shut the fuck up, you're going to give her a complex." "Pete, I'm pretty sure she can't understand anything yet."—turns out to have a scrunched face, patchy dark hair, a surprisingly strong grip, and good taste in music.

"Oh, and _now_ who's exaggerating her comprehension skills?" Pete's sprawled on the couch with Pear cradled carefully against his chest, and Patrick is sitting on the floor next to them, picking out quiet riffs for Pear to listen to. Ashlee is in the recliner, magazine across her chest, eyes shut and snoring slightly.

"She totally smiled," Patrick says, playing the riff from _gold standard_ again. Pear beams fuzzily at him, mouth wide, eyes squinched shut. "There, look, see?" He knows it's probably really gas, but he doesn't say it, and neither does Pete.

Things are surprisingly easy—even with the press appearances, all the hundred things that need their attention, Pete and Ashlee do a good job of being there for Pear, holding her and feeding her and generally treating her like she's the most precious thing in the entire world. Which, Patrick guesses, she pretty much is.

*

And then Patrick punches Cash, and it kind of all goes to shit. He wonders how he managed not to notice for so long—for _nine months_ , fuck; he's always known he could be dense, but there's dense and then there's fucking _impenetrable_ —but now that he's figured it out, there's no way not to think about it. He misses Pete and Ashlee, misses the feeling of Ashlee's skin against his; misses Pete's stupid sex faces; misses the way Pete looks, spread out on the bed and watching Patrick fuck Ashlee; misses the way Ashlee tastes when Pete's fucked her. He misses falling asleep with the two of them, warm skin and slow, deep breaths to either side of him.

He even misses Pete's stupid horsey laugh, which is dumb, because it's not like he doesn't still hear it twenty times a day. Maybe more, now, even though whatever-they-had is now done, because Pete keeps finding reasons to invite Patrick over to the house, and Patrick keeps not being able to say no.

"Pete," he says, "seriously, Pete, I was there—" he checks his watch "—less than eight hours ago." He'd gotten home, jerked off, and fallen asleep for seven hours; he'd just been thinking about jerking off again when Pete called.

(There was a time when he'd have done it anyways, jerked off as quietly as he could manage while Pete rambled, waited to see how long it took before Pete noticed, yelled at him, and joined in. Sometimes he'd put it on speakerphone so that Patrick could hear Ashlee, too.

Things change, though, and Patrick keeps his hands settled carefully on his stomach.)

"Yeah," Pete says, "but the little lady was awake for six of those eight hours, and you know that baby-hours count double." This is true, according to the table that's stuck up on the fridge. They'd worked it out on the back of an envelope in magic marker, late one evening when they were sprawled across the living room and trying to figure out whose job it was going to be to feed Pear when she woke up. One hour with a conscious baby is worth two hours without; one hour with a screaming baby counts triple.

One hour with a baby and Joe Simpson is six times the going rate, because Ashlee is a miserable cheater. Whenever they try to call her on it, though, she lifts up her shirt to show off her stretch marks, and they have to shut up.

(In Patrick's case, it's at least half because he's staring at her (still very awesome, even in a nursing bra) breasts, but, well. Some things you don't need to share.)

"Come on, Patrick," Pete says. "Come on, please?" And Patrick thinks about all the reasons he shouldn't go, and all the things he can't have, and then he sighs and tells Pete he'll be there in half an hour, once he's showered and found clean clothes. "You can shower here," Pete says, leering over the phone. "And who needs clothes at all?"

It's just Pete being Pete, Patrick knows. The only thing to do is to hang up on him and try not to think about it too much.

He thinks—he _hopes_ , for a few futile weeks—that things will get easier when they go back on tour. Asia and Australia and Europe, almost two straight months of motion and activity, and maybe he'll be able to forget about this, when he's not in their house all the time. Ashlee talks about coming out with them, but winds up deciding to stay in L.A.

"I mean, she's going to come out on tour with us eventually, you know?" she says, and Patrick nods. They're sitting on the couch, feet meeting in the middle, listening idly to the sounds of Pete doing something in the kitchen. Pear is curled small and sweet in Patrick's arms, drowsing softly against his chest, and every so often Ashlee pokes her with the big toe of her left foot.

"There's no reason to put her through that right now, though," he says, wrapping his free hand around Ashlee's ankle. "Like you said, she'll get it eventually, and right now she's so little that it's not like she'll understand or remember it."

"Yeah," Ashlee says, smiling, eyes down. "Yeah, I know, exactly. Just—" She shrugs, then settles back against the arm of the couch. "I don't know."

Patrick squeezes her ankle, and she wiggles her foot, brushing her toes against his wrist. "We're going to miss you, too," he says. "You know we will."

It's not a lie, is the problem. He _is_ going to miss her, and not even in the way he already does. He's going to miss her sharp sense of humor and her silly, awkward dancing; he's going to miss the way she looks in the morning, sleepy-eyed and fuzzy; he's going to miss watching her with Pear, careful and awestruck and gloriously happy.

He already misses her, though, misses _them_ , every single second he spends in this house. Going away from her, away from the life that isn't his—that will make things easier, maybe.

Somehow, though, it doesn't seem to work out that way. Instead, Patrick gets email after email, detailing the things Pear's been doing on the other side of the world, complete with photos of her round, curious face. Her favorite activities seem to be sleeping, sticking her feet in her mouth, and looking cute; Patrick saves all of the pictures. Ashlee calls, too, usually when Pete's off doing an interview or otherwise occupied, but sometimes not—sometimes when Pete is in the same room, even. He doesn't seem to mind, just waves at the phone and goes back to what he's doing, but Patrick feels weird, somehow, like he's doing something he shouldn't even though Ashlee was the one to call him.

And when Patrick's not keeping in touch with the home front, there's always Pete. Pete likes to take pictures of interesting things to send back to his family, so at least twice a day he drags Patrick off the bus to look at a monument or a museum or an ecologically responsible house.

"It's passively heated," he says, and Patrick nods.

"Germany, though?" he says, and Pete just shrugs and smiles.

They bus around Europe, rambling slow and noisy through unfamiliar countryside, and Pete spends at least half of their travel time with his head in Patrick's lap, staring at the ceiling and smiling vaguely.

(The rest of the time he splits between the internet and stupid pranks. He's still Pete Wentz, after all.)

The shows are good, the crowds electric, shouting Pete's words back at Patrick—but he's just as glad to get on a plane and rest his head against the window, watching the Atlantic draw by underneath them.

Pete is supposed to be flying on to LA to meet up with his family, but somehow it doesn't surprise Patrick at all when Ashlee and Pear are waiting for them at the airport gate, grinning wide excited (and, in Pear's case, toothlessly) at him.

"Hi," Ashlee says, handing Pear off to her father and pulling Patrick into a tight hug. "Surprised?"

"Not really, somehow," Patrick says, shrugging and patting her back. "Pete's been acting weird since Berlin."

"Pete's always acting weird," Ashlee points out, mouth brushing his neck. Pete is communing with Pear, holding her up so he can press their foreheads together and stare into her unfocused eyes; he flips them the bird without looking up. "Anyway," Ashlee says, "we wanted her to get used to Chicago, and you've got some time free, so we figured we'd come and visit." She pulls back, but leaves her left arm wrapped around him, pressing against him from shoulder to hip. "We can still get a hotel," she says, looking up at him from under the brim of her hat—one of Pete's, actually, and Patrick's before that.

"Don't even think about it," he tells her, pulling her a little closer. "Of course you can stay with me."

At this point he's pretty much doomed, anyways.

*

"Okay," Ashlee says, a week later. "Okay, fuck this." She stands up, balancing Pear deftly against her shoulder. "Here," she says, handing Patrick a blanket-wrapped ball of drooling baby, "you hold her."

"Um," Patrick say, settling Pear in his arms; she grizzles a little, but settles down when he gives her his fingers to play with. "Not that I'm complaining, but why?"

"Because I am sick of fucking sweatpants," Ashlee says. "And I want a fucking shower." Which is only fair, really: Ashlee's made a few press appearances since Pear was born, mostly morning shows, but Patrick doesn't think she's been out just for herself since maybe August, apart from New Year's. While they were gone, she mostly stayed home with Pear—understandable, but it makes sense that she'd be feeling twitchy by now.

"Okay," he says. "You want me to come with?"

She nods. "Pete's mom can take Pear for the night," she says. "We'll make Pete take us out for dinner, it'll be great." She pauses. "Somewhere snazzy." Another pause.

"Sounds great," Patrick says, finally. Ashlee seems to take that as permission, because she grins at him and blows a kiss at Pear and disappears upstairs.

It doesn't sound great at all, actually. It sounds like two hours of watching Pete and Ashlee be stupidly, gorgeously in love with each other, like two hours of being awkward and jealous and uncomfortably turned on. It sounds like another night where he'll drink their wine and laugh at their jokes and then go jerk off in their guest bedroom, thinking about the sex they'll certainly be having.

"Not that that's different from any other night," he tells Pear, who burbles at him. Patrick's not sure if that's agreement or just indigestion, and either way he's pretty sure he shouldn't be telling a four month old baby how much he misses having sex with her parents. "Fine, okay," he says. "Let's see what's on TV."

"Oh, classy," Ashlee says, twenty minutes later. "What, you couldn't find cartoons?"

"It was all superhero shit," Patrick says. "Plus, it was reruns." Plus, Pear really likes Project Runway, for some reason, although when Patrick glances down, he sees that she's sacked out in his arms. He straightens up and turns around, preparing to hand her back over—and stops dead, because _holy shit_.

"What?" Ashlee leans back against the doorframe, frowning. She doesn't cross her arms across her chest, but her wrists twitch a little, and Patrick can tell that she wants to. Which would be a shame, really: she's wearing a slinky black dress, something that bunches up just under her breasts and floats around her hips. Her breasts look _amazing_ , all smooth pale skin and dramatic cleavage; she's lost a lot of the baby weight, but not all of it, and what there is left of it is sticking in all of the right places, apparently.

She looks gorgeous, and Patrick is so very screwed.

"What?" Ashlee says again. "Is it too—" She raises her hands, gestures vaguely, and lets them fall.

Patrick shakes his head, immediate denial. "No," he says, "no, it's—you look _great_ ," he says. "Pear's asleep, that's all." Ashlee's face clears and she steps forward, lifting her daughter carefully out of Patrick's arms. She holds her close for a long moment, the two of them silhouetted dramatically against the late sunshine, and Patrick can't help staring—it's so much of what he wants, what isn't his to have.

Then Ashlee settles Pear carefully in her crib—the Chicago scene has been falling over itself to provide them with baby supplies, which means that in addition to everything they have in LA, they have a crib for Pear in Patrick's guest bedroom and one in the living room—and plops herself down on Patrick's lap, straddling his legs. The skirt rides up her legs, and Patrick tries not to stare, really he does, but then Ashlee wobbles slightly and he reaches up to steady her, hands on her thighs, sliding up and back until he's pretty much groping her ass.

Ashlee smiles, quick and bright and nervous and determined, and scoots forward until, yeah, Patrick's definitely groping her ass. The tips of his fingers are just barely brushing against soft cotton, stretchy and thin and warm from her skin; it probably says strange things about Patrick's life that he can tell without looking that Ashlee's wearing her favorite pair of blue underwear.

"Hi," she says, leaning in and pressing a kiss against his cheek. "You know what's funny?"

Patrick is sure that there are a lot of things about this situation that could—potentially, at some point, maybe in several million years and on a different planet, or possibly in his next life—be funny. Somehow, though, he can't think of any of them quite at present. His mouth is dry, his palms are damp, and he feels like his brain is a TV test screen, all meaningless useless static.

"Um," he says articulately. It must be the right response, though, because Ashlee leans in again, and Patrick shouldn't kiss her—he shouldn't, he _shouldn't_ , she's his best friend's wife and babymomma and she is so off-limits she's practically the _Pope_ —but she's insistent, and she's actually pretty strong, and she holds him against the couch and kisses him on the mouth, slow and sweet and careful, licking gently into his mouth and then back out.

"I miss you," she says, pulling back, like this whole conversation makes sense from her side. "I miss you," she says again, "even though I see you pretty much every day."

"Um," Patrick says again. "I'm sorry?" It comes out as a question, and Ashlee rolls her eyes instead of answering, leans in and kisses him again, longer and slower and dirtier, and Patrick knows better but he also knows that he misses her too, misses her most of all when she's curled against his side during a mid-morning movie marathon.

"Come on," Ashlee says, "come on, let's do this thing." There's no way she means what it sounds like, Patrick knows, no way at all, she's not—except for how apparently she _is_ suggesting what it sounds like, going by the way her hands are fumbling between their bodies, undoing his jeans and reaching into his boxers.

"Fuck," she says, kissing the side of his head. "Fuck, yeah, I missed this." Her hand wraps around his dick, stroking gently, and this is probably a bad idea—no, scratch that, _definitely_ a bad idea—but Ashlee is warm and tastes like mints and he has missed her, too.

And really, there's no reason Pete should be the only one who gets to make bad decisions.

Pete comes home half an hour later and finds the two of them on the couch, watching some cooking show. Pear is awake again, and nursing; Pete swoops over and presses a gentle kiss to the crown of her head. Patrick focuses on the alarmingly angular woman greasing a glass pan and not on how he's pretty sure that, if Ashlee's shirt dips half an inch lower, the hickies on her breasts will be completely visible.

Pete kisses Ashlee, gently and lingeringly, then flings himself onto the couch between them, squirming around until his head is in Patrick's lap. He bats his eyelashes and flicks Patrick's hat, but doesn't move in for a kiss, which is probably for the best. Patrick rinsed, after, but he can still taste Ashlee at the corners of his lips and on the back of his tongue.

"So, hey," Pete says, beaming and kicking his feet until Ashlee swats him. "Where are we going for dinner?"

*

They wind up at some place that Pete "heard about last week, it's supposed to be really awesome." Usually, Pete "hears" about these things from Scimeca, but this place seems pretty classy, all low lighting and sleek furniture, so maybe not. Then again, maybe; it's hard to tell, with Nick.

The waitress very carefully doesn't bat an eyelash at Ashlee and Pete, hand-in-hand and grinning, which says a lot about the kind of restaurant it is. She smiles a little at Patrick, too, warm and kind of secretive, which says a lot about the kind of kid she is. She gives them their menus and disappears, and Pete immediately launches into an insanely detailed story about his latest exploits at the label. It's stupidly engaging, in the way that so many of Pete's stories are, and it carries them through the appetizers and most of the way through their main dishes.

"So finally I get the guy alone," Pete says, "and we talk, and it turns out that all he fucking wants is for us to pay for him to move his cats up from Louisiana!" Of course that's not all—it never is, when Pete's involved—but Patrick relaxes as Pete explains exactly how difficult it is to move a pair of Siamese cats from Baton Rouge to Chicago. "Harder than you would fucking think, dude," Pete says, and explains why, and Patrick leans back into the booth and sips his beer.

At the end of the story, Ashlee is leaning against Patrick's shoulder, shaking with helpless giggles, and Pete is beaming, sparkling in the way he always does when he has a good story and a good audience.

"But, hey," he says, snagging the bottle out of Patrick's hand and drinking the last drops. "I'm being an asshole—"

"—shocker," Patrick mutters, mostly for the pleasure of feeling Ashlee laugh against his neck.

"—fuck you," Pete adds, smoothly. "What did you two do all day today?"

Patrick shrugs, carefully casual. "Oh, you know," he says. "Watched TV, hung out with Pear, robbed a few banks." Pete grins, flipping his fork back and forth over his fingers.

"Yeah," Ashlee says, "and also, Patrick fucked me on the couch." The fork clatters onto the plate.

"Oh," Pete says, and Patrick can't read his voice and he can't look at his face. " _Oh_." He takes a deep, shivery breath. Patrick shifts a little in his seat, but Ashlee's arm is around his shoulders, holding him in place. "Is this—" Pete breaks off, slides his fingers around the lip of Patrick's beer bottle, takes another breath. "Is this—I mean, are we doing this?" Patrick waits, but the silence is too much, and he has to look up, has to see Pete watching him, eyes wide and expectant. Ashlee's hand brushes the back of his neck, slow and gentle.

And there's not even—there's no chance at all, no choices, only one way for this to go. Patrick nods, his mouth dry, because he's never been able to say no to Pete, and because—because he wants this. Wants _them_ , for however long he gets to have them.

"Well, okay," Pete says, tight and nervous and anticipatory. "I guess we'd better skip dessert."

"Yes," Ashlee says. "Fuck me, yes."

Pete grins. "Greedy," he says, affectionately, and waves for the check.

*

They tumble into the house together at barely 6:30, giggling and exuberant, a tangle of arms and legs and Ashlee's long red hair. At the top of the stairs, Pete heads for Patrick's bedroom, dragging Ashlee along behind him, but Patrick catches them both by the shoulders and pulls them back.

"My room is a pit, _and_ ," he adds, "the guest bed is bigger." Pete nods, objection abandoned, and Ashlee grins and gestures to Patrick to lead the way.

Inside, Pete trips over his pants and goes flying, cackling with glee; Ashlee wobbles in her heels and rebounds off of the bedpost, flopping down onto the blankets with a whoosh of breath and a wide smile. They roll together on the bed, easy and habitual, and press their foreheads together, trading secret glances and lazy kisses.

Patrick stands back for a second and watches them both, their contrasts and their similarities, and loves them both, fiercely and unavoidably and impossibly. They turn as one to stare at him, Ashlee's smile wide and secretive, Pete's a challenge and an invitation.

And he toes off his shoes and he goes to them, because he is theirs—has always, he thinks, been theirs.

Pete tastes like his stupid aftershave and Ashlee more like baby powder, but underneath they both taste like sweat, and Patrick moves from one to the other, licking their skin and watching them both shiver. Their hands are on him, touching slowly and surely, holding him against them, nails digging in when he bites down just enough.

(Sometimes it's Ashlee's nails on his shoulder and Pete's skin under his mouth. Ashlee really does like the bruises, as it turns out.)

After a while, Pete rolls away, across the bed; Patrick notices the empty air along his side, but doesn't really mind. He's got his mouth pressed against Ashlee's collarbone, resting his cheek against her breasts, and her hands are stroking restlessly along his shoulders, tugging him infinitesimally closer. Every so often, he drags his thumbnail across her nipple, enjoying the difference in textures and the way she arches up underneath him, breath catching.

"Mmm," Ashlee says again, "oh, yeah, that's nice." Before Patrick can ask what, specifically, he feels it: Pete's knee between his legs, shoving them wider; Pete's breath on the back of his neck, soft and damp; Pete's slick hand slipping down past his tailbone. He shivers, closing his eyes and lifting his hips, and Ashlee strokes his hair, murmuring quietly while Pete fucks him.

"Fuck," Pete says, "Fuck, Patrick."

"Yeah, babe," Ashlee says, pressing her fingers against the back of Patrick's neck, "I'm pretty sure that's the plan."

Pete's laughter is rough but his fingers are steady and smooth, moving in and then out, curling and twisting until Patrick is arching his back, biting Ashlee's breasts just to have something between his teeth. Ashlee gasps, and Pete's fingers pull out, damp against Patrick's hip when Pete holds him still.

"Are you—can I—" Pete says, and Patrick is nodding yes before he's even finished his sentence, practically before he's even started talking, but Ashlee sits up, shaking her head.

"Wait," she says, holding up her hands until they stop moving and stare at her. "Wait, hang on—we need to reorganize." When neither of them move, still frozen and waiting, she rolls her eyes. "I mean, this is nice and all," she says, pushing gently on Patrick's shoulders, "but it isn't doing much for me."

"Oh," Patrick says, " _oh_." He scoots back, ignoring Pete's complaints and the swat he aims at Patrick's hip, and lets Ashlee wiggle around until she's sitting up, leaning back against the mountain of pillows at the head of the bed.

"Oh!" says Pete when Patrick lowers his head between Ashlee's thighs, and Patrick is smiling as he licks Ashlee's clit. Ashlee's giggle turns into a gasp, and he licks down again, scraping his teeth carefully across delicate skin.

"Fuck you both," Pete says, leaning forward across Patrick's back to reach for the night table. His dick bumps against the inside of Patrick's thighs, leaving damp spots that cool quickly; his hand scrabbles uncoordinatedly a few inches from the drawer. "Fuck," he says again, "babe, can you—" Ashlee's hand leaves Patrick's shoulder and she yanks the drawer open, pulling out a condom and slapping it into Pete's hand before pushing Patrick's head back between her legs.

Pete laughs again, clearly audible even over the sounds of him wrestling with the condom wrapper, but Patrick just shrugs and works his arm around under his body so that he can slide two fingers inside of Ashlee. She moans, and Patrick smirks a little, but then Pete slides his _dick_ into Patrick, and he gives up the high ground in favor of groaning.

Of course Pete won't last long—he never does, really—but Patrick doesn't need much. Between Ashlee (the smell of her; the way she bucks down against his hand whenever it gets good and arches up into his mouth whenever he teases; the delicate tremors in her thighs as she gets closer) and Pete (gasping and grunting and swearing against Patrick's back; holding his hips and fucking him with long, slow strokes) and the endless anticipation, he's already close. Pete nudges his thighs that much further apart, and Ashlee slides her hand down the side of his face, and that's it, that's all, he's coming against their sheets and Ashlee's calves, Pete's dick still moving in his ass.

"Oh," Pete says again, and then, "oh, fuck," and then he's coming, too, snapping his hips against Patrick hard and fast and desperate.

"Ow," Patrick says, as Pete collapses bonelessly against his back, "fucker, I'm going to have ass bruises from your stupid hipbones. Ow," he says again, when Ashlee punches him on the shoulder, but he obediently goes back down again, curling his fingers up and licking until Ashlee's legs are spread wide, feet braced against the bed as she fucks herself on Patrick's fingers and his face. She moans softly, but it cuts off when Pete scoots up the bed. In the end, all Patrick can hear are the soft sounds of them kissing, the wet noises his fingers make inside of her, the quiet creak of the bedsprings and the loud hush of his own breathing.

When she sags back against the sheets, they rustle just a bit, almost but not quite muffling the sounds of Pete and Ashlee whispering to each other. Patrick wipes his mouth and rests his head against Ashlee's thigh; after a moment, their hands come down to rest on his shoulders, one on each side.

The phone rings, and they all jump. On the second ring, Ashlee shifts slightly, but it's Pete who rolls out of bed and digs through the tangle of clothes on the floor until he finds his jeans.

"Hey," he says, and then "yeah, okay, great." He takes a deep breath, then reaches down again, sorting one-handed through the tangle of clothes. "Yeah, great, thanks—just ring the bell, we'll come down." He snaps the phone shut and tosses it onto the bed, shimmying into his boxers. "My mom," he says. "She's going to swing by, bring the little lady home for the night."

"Okay, cool," Ashlee says, sitting up and cracking her back; Patrick would lean forward and kiss one of the small red marks on her breasts, but he knows that it's time for him to go. He rolls out of bed and grabs his own jeans, throwing them over his arm and hunting around for his shirt.

"Hey, no, wait," Pete says; "you don't have to get up, dude."

"Yeah, but," Patrick shrugs. "I should go, you know?" Pete opens his mouth, then closes it, then opens it again, but he steps away from the door, gesturing Patrick past him.

"Wait," Ashlee says, "wait, _what?_ "

"Ash," Pete says, but Patrick hears her get out of bed, and before he can make the hallway her hand is on his shoulder, dragging him back into the room.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" she asks.

"Ash, let him go," Pete says, sliding his arm around her naked waist. "Babe, he's—just let him go, okay?"

"But he's being an _idiot,_ " she says. Ashlee shakes her hair back, and her face is pale and determined. "Just—just, why?"

Patrick sighs. Of all the things he didn't want to do today—"I have to," he says. "You know I have to."

"But _why_?"

Patrick gestures at the bassinet. "Because your daughter's coming home in fifteen minutes, in case you forgot."

"Yeah, and so?" Ashlee rolls her eyes. "Our daughter fucking adores you, in case you hadn't noticed."

"It's just—"

"It is not gas, you complete tool." Ashlee stares at him for a moment, but then her shoulders drop. "Is it—I mean, is it just too weird? Because I can't do anything about him," she elbows Pete in the stomach, but he doesn't move, just stares at Patrick with wide, scared eyes, "but—"

"No," Patrick says, cutting her off. "No, it's just—you're a _family_ ," he says, finally. "And I'm—"

"Also family," Pete says, breaking his stop-motion and stepping forward, grabbing Patrick by the upper arm, painfully tight. "Patrick, you're _family_."

"Yeah," Ashlee adds. "Dickwad."

"Yeah, sure," Patrick says, and tries to pull away. Pete just pulls him closer, though, close enough that Ashlee can grab him by the other shoulder. "I'm the uncle with all of the instruments and the hats and—"

"You're _ours_ ," Pete says, like somehow that makes it okay. "You're ours," which Patrick knew, "and we're yours," which—which maybe he didn't.

"Oh," Patrick says. "Oh."

"Dipshit," Pete says, and pulls him into a three-way hug, twice as warm and twice as close as anything else in the world.

*

Dale rings the bell seventeen minutes later, but Pete and Ashlee are still hogging his shower; Patrick, by virtue of being the only one dressed, gets to get the door. She hands Pear over to him without any kind of surprise or suspicion, which suggests that maybe Pete and Ashlee are right, and he did accidentally marry into the Wentz (-Simpson) clan without realizing it.

"It's kind of lame," he says, after Dale leaves. "I mean, I should at least get a certificate or something, you know?"

Ashlee laughs. "Yeah, like—like a merit badge, you know?"

"Like a ring?" Pete adds, and for a while they all sit there and beam quietly at each other, passing Pear between them when she fusses.

It's not quite that easy, and Patrick knows both of them—and, to be fair, knows _himself_ —too well to think that it will ever be that easy. Still, for now he can hold their sleeping daughter against his chest, with Pete's head in his lap and Ashlee's arm around his shoulder, and somehow life doesn't seem so insurmountable.

"Man," Pete says, after a moment, "you do realize that this means you have to apologize to Cash, right?" He tries to keep a straight face, but winds up laughing so hard he almost can't get the question out. On Patrick's other side, Ashlee is just as bad, although at least she has the decency to muffle her giggles against his shoulder.

"Fuck you," Patrick says. "Fuck you both."

God, he loves them so fucking much.


End file.
